Quotes About Memory

Every true history must force us to remember that the past was once as real as the present and as uncertain as the future.

The poetry of history lies in the quasi-miraculous fact that once, on this familiar spot of ground, walked other men and women, as actual as we are today, thinking their own thoughts, swayed by their own passion, but now all gone, one generation vanishing after another, gone as utterly as we ourselves shall shortly be gone like ghosts at cock-crow.

Days, when the ball of our vision Had eagles that flew unabashed to sun; When the grasp on the bow was decision, And arrow and hand and eye were one; When the Pleasures, like waves to a swimmer, Came heaving for rapture ahead!- Invoke then, they dwindle, they glimmer As lights over mounds of the dead. -Ode to Youth and Memory

Once the singing was and is

He who controls the past commands the future. He who commands the future conquers the past.

The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.

Past a certain point, all the dates grow hazy and confused, and the clarity of history becomes the fog of legend.

Nothing makes the past a sweeter place to visit than the prospect of imminent death.

What is honor compared to a woman's love? What is duty against the feel of a newborn son in your arms . . . or the memory of a brother's smile? Wind and words. Wind and words. We are only human, and the gods have fashioned us for love. That is our great glory, and our great tragedy.

When the sun has set, no candle can replace it.

Aemon's blind white eyes came open. "Egg?" he said, as the rain streamed down his cheeks. "Egg, I dreamed that I was old.

Men live their lives trapped in an eternal present, between the mists of memory and the sea of shadow that is all we know of the days to come.

The North remembers.

Can I dwell on what I scarce remember? I held a castle on the Marches once, and there was a woman I was pledged to marry, but I could not find that castle today, nor tell you the color of that woman's hair. Who knighted me, old friend? What were my favorite foods? It all fades. Sometimes I think I was born on the bloody grass in that grove of ash, with the taste of fire in my mouth and a hole in my chest. Are you my mother, Thoros?

You do not steal from the dragon, oh, no. The dragon remembers.

Remember Old Nan's stories, Bran. Remember the way she told them, the sound of her voice. So long as you do that, part of her will always be alive in you.

Women do not forget. Women do not forgive.

I do so hope he plays us 'The Rains of Castamere.' It has been an hour. I've forgotten how it goes.

Do you believe in ghosts, Maester?" [Jaime] asked Qyburn. The man's face grew strange. "Once, at the Citadel, I came into an empty room and saw an empty chair. Yet I knew a woman had been there, only a moment before. The cushion was dented where she'd sat, the cloth was still warm, and her scent lingered in the air. If we leave our smells behind us when we leave a room, surely something of our souls must remain when we leave this life?

Even now, long days later, the memory filled him with a bitter rage. All his life Tyrion had prided himself on his cunning, the only gift the gods had seen fit to give him, and yet this seven-times-damned she-wolf Catelyn Stark had outwitted him at every turn. The knowledge was more galling than the bare fact of his abduction.

He raised his eyes. "Sister. See. This time I knew you." Asha's heart skipped a beat. "Theon?" His lips skinned back in what might have been a grin. Half his teeth were gone, and half those still left him were broken and splintered. "Theon," he repeated. "My name is Theon. You have to know your name.

You want to know the horrible truth ? I cant even remember what she looked like! I only know she was the one thing I ever wanted..and 7 kingdoms couldnt fill the hole she left behind

The north remembers, Lord Davos. The north remembers, and the mummer's farce is almost done. My son is home.

Men live their lives trapped in an eternal present, between the mists of memory and the sea of shadow that is all we know of the days to come. Certain moths live their whole lives in a day, yet to them that little span of time must seem as long as years and decades do to us. An oak may live three hundred years, a redwood tree three thousand. A weirwood will live forever if left undisturbed. To them seasons pass in the flutter of a moth's wing, and past, present, and future are one.